Fascination Place

A few months ago Debbi and I were thinking of going to Hawaii this month. We never got around to planning the trip, but when we finally decided we weren’t going, I looked at my calendar and though, “Actually, September looks like a pretty good time to take a vacation anyway, even to just stay around home”, and I had the vacation time to do it.

Well, after last week, I was oh-so-glad I’d taken this week off, because I really needed the break.

I’ve kept plenty busy this week, though. For instance, I went up to have lunch with Debbi at her workplace twice this week (they have a very nice cafeteria and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve eaten there). I also cooked dinner twice, making an Indian dish on Wednesday, and sautéed marinated chicken with rice pilaf on Thursday.

Monday I went into the city afterwards and did some shopping, notably stopping at Borderlands Books (although I didn’t get to see their new kitten). I struck out going around to the comic book stores up there, though. In the evening I played Magic over at my friend Chris’ place, and was able to play later than usual since it wasn’t a “school night” for me.

Tuesday I drove down to Campbell and had brunch at Stacks, which was only blemished by the fact that I was sitting at the one table right across from the toasting machine, so it was a little too warm. But I spent the morning walking around downtown Campbell and shopping at Recycle Bookstore West and at Heroes. Heroes is the one comics shop (other than my regular store, Comics Conspiracy) that I make a point of visiting every few months: They’ve resisted the move to becoming a trade paperback store, and still have a large back issue selection which turns over regularly, as well as many other goodies. They’ve been reorganizing over the last couple of years and they now have little nooks which have little surprises waiting for just the right customer to come in and find them. (For example, they had a copy of The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.)

I’ve spent most of the rest of the week hanging around at home, reading comic books and a novel, revising my Magic decks, and doing a bunch of housework, such as trimming the tree in front of the house and cleaning up the front room a bit. I thought about going to play poker, but could never quite motivate myself to go.

It’s been a warm, sunny week. The painter’s been working on the trim and other details around the complex. I haven’t really missed going bike riding this week due to the heat and keeping myself so busy. I did utterly fail at my plan of trying to do a journal entry a day and get caught up on the partially-written stuff in my drafts folder. Oh well. But I did talk to Mom today; she gave me a call since she just got high-speed internet service and is able to put her new computer to work with it.

But overall it’s been both relaxing and productive, and I’ve managed to get past all the turmoil of last week. Newton’s even been taking his thyroid pills without complaint! (Turns out he loves pill pockets.)

Ahh, if only I had next week off, too.

For a rapid-fire, three-day introduction to the Bay Area, you could do what my sister Katy and I did the first half of this week:

• Breakfast at the Main Street Grill in Half Moon Bay, followed by some stops at the ocean along the coast.
• Visit Muir Wood National Monument
• Lunch and ice cream at Ghirardelli Square. Some seats at Lori’s Diner have a window view of the bay.
• Visit the Golden Gate Bridge and walk out to the first pylon.
• Visit Golden Gate Park, including the Shakespeare Garden, Japanese Tea Garden, and Strybing Arboretum.
• Stop off for a short walk on Ocean Beach.
• Visit the Winchester Mystery House.
• And stop in to visit my employer. (Admittedly, you’ll get more out of this stop if you’re a friend of mine than if you’re a random visitor. You can still buy some swag at the company store, though.)

Katy and I have had a tempestuous - is that the right word? Sure, why not - relationship. We didn’t really get along at all in our teenaged years, and we have rather different memories of what it was like growing up in our home town, though to be fair on that count our experiences were quite different for two people who went through the same school system and grew up in the same town with the same parents. So all things considered we didn’t really have a lot of motivation to become friends as adults. I think what changed is that we just grew up (eventually), and my nephew Ivan I think motivated Katy to reconnect, as she drove up with him to visit the last two times I went back to visit my parents. So although I can’t speak for her, on my end I was perfectly comfortable having her stay for a few days before attending the conference she’s at for the second half of this week.

Maybe I pack a little too much into visits from family and friends, but we had a lot of fun, and ate a lot of good food besides. We had great weather - she came out just ahead of the heat wave that’s scorching us today - and had some nice quiet evenings with Debbi and the cats. And as with my Mom, Blackjack was charmed by Katy and visited him every night to snooze with her.

To my amusement, when I introduced her to my cow-orkers on a tour through work, three of them asked whether he had any insight into where my punning nature comes from. She doesn’t really know, though; I think I’m just a prodigy.

So it was fun, and she might even come back! And, for those of you who know both of us, here’s the evidence:

One room at the Conservatory of Flowers is filled with butterflies. Well, “filled” may be too strong a term; in fact, when we first walked in and I saw a butterfly flitting away from me, I was disappointed that it seemed to be the only one.

Then I noticed one on the windows.

And another one.

And then I realized there were dozens - maybe hundreds - of them in there, but only a few were in the air at any one time. And they were all different colors and sizes. Very impressive!

There’s also has a case in which butterflies in chrysalis were evolving from their caterpillar forms, some of them having already emerged.

A few of the many colorful butterflies we saw:

Naturally, I highly recommend visiting the Conservatory if you have the chance. It’s great!

More photos from the Conservatory of Flowers. One of the far rooms (well, there are only five rooms, but still) mainly features water plants. As you can see from these photos, this room features some metal railings and artwork, which I presume are a century or more old:

In addition to orchids, this room contains quite a few pitcher plants, carnivorous plants hanging from a variety of pots:

There was also this oddity, which resembles a bird of paradise, but I’ve never seen one with the green fronds fanning out like this, so I’m not certain what exactly it is:

The Conservatory of Flowers is located in a late-19th-century building in Golden Gate Park, and is full of wonderful and fascinating plants. The building apparently has been quite resistant to earthquakes, except that of course it’s covered in glass, and that glass has to be replaced from time to time. (Still, this is less maintenance than some historic buildings require!) It re-opened a few years ago after a major renovation.

I took so many photos when Dad and I visited last week that I’m going to split them up into several posts.

As you can see, the Conservatory is a beautiful building with lovely grounds - and that’s without the summer planting being in place (or so I infer, from the strips of empty dirt amongst the grass):

(Click for a larger image)

The whole interior of the buildings is used for exhibits, by the way. I presume they store maintenance equipment elsewhere nearby.

There are orchids throughout the building, in different rooms with different temperatures and climates, and many of them were blooming:

There are many other plants, too, some of them more exotic-looking than others. I don’t generally expect spiny-looking plants like this one to be so colorful:

I don’t know what that last plant is, though.

Here’s a photo of Dad standing in front of the control console and some banks of hardware from the SAGE system at the Computer History Museum last weekend:

You can’t see the cigarette lighter on the console, which is a feature Apple somehow never puts in its iMacs.

Dad says he contributed to the SAGE project in some capacity back in the day, I guess on the software end. Whenever I hear about the SAGE project it always sounds like this big boondoggle which was obsolete by the time it was deployed, but nonetheless was maintained for decades thereafter.

Here I am in front of one of two completed versions of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine, also at the museum:

Unfortunately it wasn’t in operation when we were there. It’s a very impressive aggregation of metal, though; I can see why Babbage was unable to complete it in his own era.

Some photos from our trip to Año Nuevo State Natural Reserve last Friday with my Dad.

These little guys kept flying up to us when we were in a shelter/information hut halfway to the viewing site, hovering briefly, and then flying away. Then they’d do it again. Eventually I realized they must have a nest inside the shelter, and they flew in and landed when we stepped out the other end:

One of the seals had tracking devices glued to her head and back, as you can see here. The docents told us that scientists shave their fur to glue these devices to them. Apparently they sometimes fall off on their own, though:

A few seals were wrestling in the water, while others were galumphing around the shore, like this guy (or gal):

But mostly everyone was asleep, basking in the sun, as you can see in the background of the pictures above.

Wow, the rest of my Dad’s visit just flew by; I can’t believe I’m back at work already!

I put hundreds of miles on my car this past week, but that’s not really surprising; there’s a lot to do in the Bay Area - even on his third trip, there were still things he hadn’t seen before, and a few I hadn’t seen before - but most of it is widely spread out.

Following the trips to the coast and the Livermore wine country on Friday and Saturday respectively, Sunday we went to the A La Carte and Art festival downtown, which I think Dad enjoyed more than he’d expected. He picked up a few goodies, and reminisced with one of the vendors about making rubber band guns back in the 40s. After that we went to the Computer History Museum. I was sure I’d been there with Dad before, but he says not. But it’s always a terrific visit, and we got to see the Babbage Engine they have on display there (one of two in the world).

In the evening we drove up to San Francisco to have dinner with my cousin K, who coincidentally has the same name as Dad (well, okay, actually it was intentional). My other cousin, L, also lives up there, but was out of town. She recommended a restaurant for us to go to, though, so we went up with Debbi, picked up K, and had a fine dinner. I haven’t seen K in years - probably since I was in college; he’s quieter than I’d remembered. But the family resemblance among him, me and Dad is pretty clear. (Somehow we managed to completely forget to get any photos of the three of us.)

That was the first of three trips we made to the city (and that one was in Debbi’s car!). On Monday Dad and I drove up hoping to go to the Cable Car Museum, but there was absolutely no parking there. We thought about parking elsewhere and taking a (duh!) cable car there, but they were also doing some work on the tracks, so we decided to punt. Instead we drove over to Golden Gate Park.

So I have this amazing talent for forgetting that the museums in SF are closed on Mondays. Gah. Fortunately, there’s always something more to do. We went to the Japanese Tea Garden, and then walked through Strybing Arboretum. I see a little more of the Arboretum each time I go - it’s always fun to visit. This time around I learned that Monday seems to be watering day in the arboretum. Sheesh! After that we stopped at Ocean Beach to see the sea, and then I dragged Dad to Borderlands Books, which is fun to visit during the week since there’s plenty of on-street parking, for a change! I got some cuddle time with Ripley, their hairless cat, too.

Tuesday we went up again, this time to visit the Conservatory of Flowers in the park. I’d never been before, and I highly recommend it; it’s full of orchids and palm trees and other tropical plants, plus it has a room full of butterflies. Very cool. And it’s in a 19th century building, too! After that we went to the Musee Mechanique. Dad wasn’t so impressed with the Musee, and I’ll admit that I think their old location at the Cliff House was better; it presented its contents in a more historical order, whereas the current arrangement seems rather scattershot, even though it has more space for the exhibits. Ah well.

And as I said yesterday we ate plenty of food amidst all of this driving. We were usually pretty wiped out once we’d eaten dinner, so we had some quiet evenings at home, although we did watch the season finales of both Smallville (which I’m kind of glad I don’t watch anymore) and House (which I kind of wonder if I should watch more often).

Wednesday it was up early (well, early for me) to drop Dad off at the airport. On the way out of the airport, my car rolled over to 90,000 miles. I put another 60 or so miles on it in a failed attempt to spend the afternoon on the beach (it was far too windy, and the clincher was that the wind was blowing the sand into my face and hair). That was a bummer, and put me in a melancholy mood for the rest of the day. Or maybe it was the prospect of going back to work today.

Anyway, I had a great visit with Dad. I think I enjoyed our trip to the coast on Friday the most, although the Conservatory of Flowers was really neat, too. And of course it was just good to see him.

I’ll put up a few more pictures from his visit over the next few days, but for now I’ll end with this one:

Apparently before he flew out, my Dad was told by my Mom that he’d gain ten pounds visiting me, since we always feed our guests extremely well. In that spirit, here’s where we chowed down over the past week:

Thursday:

• Gyros House

Friday:

• Main Street Grill: One of my favorite breakfast places. Just about the best coffee I’ve had in the area, not to mention great food.
• The Counter

Saturday:

• The cafe at Garré Winery: A surprisingly good menu for a cafe attached to a winery.
• Su Hong: My favorite Chinese restaurant.

Sunday:

• A La Carte and Art festival
• Universal Cafe: We went to dinner with one of my cousins, and this restaurant was recommended by another cousin. It’s a cut above the usual restaurants I eat at, and was excellent. Their frites (french fries) appretizer is huge!

Monday:

• The Original Pancake House
• Don Giovanni

Tuesday:

• The Original Pancake House (again): Dad liked it so much we went back and got different dishes.
• Ice cream sundaes at Ghirardelli Square
• Cascal: Our local tapas restaurant, which I’d recently visited for the first time.

Maybe not ten pounds’ worth, but that’s a lot of food!

Last night we were driving back from San Francisco (details forthcoming) when we spotted the moon a few degrees above the horizon. This was around 7:30, so it was still before sunset, and the moon was rising. We noticed that the moon was not quite full, with a little bite taken out of it at the bottom.

We wondered whether the moon was nearly full, or just past full.

I said, “There has to be a way to figure this out logically.”

My Dad said that this is an empirical problem, so he was doubtful we could reason our way out of it.

I said, “Well, we know that on average there’s more than one full moon per month, and so we ought to be able to figure out from that whether the moon rises a little earlier each day, or a little later. And if we know that then we should be able to figure out whether it’s nearly full or just past full.” I decided that since there’s more than one full moon per month, that meant that the moon was rising a little earlier each day, and that meant that that moon was not quite full.

About 20 minutes later I said, “The moon looks a little more full to me now, so I think I’m right.” Much laughter ensued.

I think my reasoning was a little off, mainly because what I really need to know is whether the moon rises more than once per day, and using “full moons per month” as a proxy for that is not right, because they’re not the same thing. Indeed, since our months are somewhat based on the lunar cycle, “full moons per month” is a circular argument. Well, sort of.

But it turns out I was right anyway, since the full moon is tomorrow.

Which goes to show once again that it’s better to be lucky than good.